Yes, I went willingly into that dark night -- I needed a change of scenery, my skin was starting to turn into an inverse form of white that happens when you actually take in negative amounts of sunlight, and I was afraid if I didn't move away from the Lower East side I might be at risk of being stopped on the street, bulldozed, and instantly turned into a shiny new thirty-story high-rise.

As a quarry, the ancient Egyptians had mined this diorite seam systematically—cutting four narrow ledges out of the great wall, so that now the rock face looked like a thirty-story office building that had been divided into four steplike tiers.